DESCRIPTION (Applicant's abstract): This competing continuation application seeks funding to continue the research of the Univ. of Michigan School of Social Work's Center on Poverty, Risk, and Mental Health. We aim, over five years, to: 1) Move beyond risk factor/pre-intervention research studies and further develop treatment and mental health services research; 2) Build capacity to sustain a research program through continued faculty development, and 3) Advance social work's capacity to produce research that influences social work researchers, poverty researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. Core research areas are: psychiatric epidemiology/ pre-intervention research on poverty and mental health among low-income single mothers and their children and preventive intervention/mental health services research including randomized interventions for welfare recipients, at-risk infants, pre-school children, juvenile delinquents with serious emotional disturbance and their families, and evaluations of service delivery for adults with long-term mental illness. Our research seeks to reduce the public health burden of excess mental disorder among the poor by identifying potent and changeable risk and protective factors elucidating the pathways through which they operate, developing more effective methods for early detection of mental disorders and their precursors, and developing, testing, and evaluating effective interventions and services. We require infrastructure support in key areas: methods for identifying risk and protective factors and for understanding the pathways and processes through which they contribute to excess mental disorder, methods to detect individuals at increased risk, and methods to develop selective and indicated preventive interventions, and interventions to prevent relapse, comorbidity, and disability. We will build our infrastructure through multidisciplinary collaboration with mental health researchers within the University and at other institutions, via technical staff support, seminars and workshops, core funding for pilot studies, and strategic hiring of additional faculty. Outcomes will include R01 and K-award proposals, publications, and a cadre of well-trained researchers. We will disseminate findings so that our research is translated into improved policies and services. Continued support will institutionalize 1 ZMH1 3 1 R24 MH51363-06 May, 2000 DANZIGER, SHELDON H our capacity to provide national leadership and help reduce the public health burden of mental disorder.